


Prelude

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Cats, Charles Is a Darling, Erik is a darling, Gen, Inspired by Music, Musicians, Neighbors, Piano, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While he's on vacation Erik gets treated to more or less daily musical performances from a neighbor who plays the piano very well. At the same time, he meets Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prelude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keio/gifts), [error_era](https://archiveofourown.org/users/error_era/gifts).



Erik picks up on the third ring and begins to pace, and notices that he’s keeping time for his unseen neighbor - coming and going allows him to complete the delicate cadences drifting in through the window.

“You’re standing near the window again, Erik, I can hear that godawful noise.”

“It’s not noise, Emma,” he says with exaggerated patience, “it’s music. Someone is playing the piano, as they always do at this time of the day. They’re pretty good, too.”

Unladylike snort. “You’re a philistine, Erik, if you think that’s music. _I_ can’t identify it.”

“Therefore it’s not music? You’re such a snob. It’s soothing. It helps me work.”

“So when can I expect the spreads? You do know we can’t proceed without you. Hiatus or not.”

“Flattery doesn’t work on me,” Erik says, and taps one foot to maintain the beat when he gets tired of pacing. He leans against his window. There is a high fence between the tiny house he retreats to when he’s not traveling the world shooting the latest fashion editorials, and the nearly identical house that’s - well, it’s occupied, is all he knows about it. That and there’s a person who lives in there who plays the piano.

As Emma prattles on about where she expects him to be once he comes back from his break, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye and waves a half-hearted farewell to his cat, Moira, as she slinks out the cat flap to wherever it is she likes to spend her days.

He’s just grateful she deigns to come back for dinner, for the most part. In the city he keeps her cooped up; here she can run around as she’s meant to. Which doesn’t really stop him from being concerned from time to time, but since she always manages to turn back up in the evenings, he supposes he can dial back the overprotective cat-owner instincts.

That makes him laugh - good thing Emma’s already hung up on him.

He trots into the kitchen to fix a late breakfast and makes a face when he discovers he’s out of eggs and orange juice; he makes do with the bread and the last chunk of Gouda and the peanut butter.

Halfway through his coffee the music from next door starts up again, making him start - he honestly hadn’t noticed that the player had stopped, because in his head the music has been looping, again and again, sweetly lilting, up and down in the time it takes to breathe deeply.

This time the tune almost, almost seems familiar - but Erik still has to look through the collection of movies he keeps on one of his portable hard drives to be sure: Yann Tiersen, La Valse d’Amelie, but it sounds so much more melancholy rendered by one single piano and the talented hands of whoever’s playing.

He closes his eyes and lets the music take him in, wrap itself around him.

*

He has an odd sense of being followed when he pushes the door to the neighborhood grocery open - but all he has to do is look over his shoulder and he steps deftly to the side, but still holds the door for the man who passes in after him. “Much obliged,” he says to Erik, steering his wheelchair towards the produce aisles.

Erik shrugs and loses himself in mentally tearing down and rebuilding the milk displays: sure, there’s nothing inherently sexy about milk cartons, but only because people think of them as containers. If they were _bricks_ , architectural elements, then he could photograph them as cityscapes, commentaries on modern design, or deconstructions of current monochrome aesthetics. _Take that Emma,_ he thinks, amused.

“You can’t possibly find milk cartons all that amusing in and of themselves,” the same voice from earlier murmurs, breaking Erik’s reverie. “And also, are you actually hoarding some of the cheeses here, because I just got back from the dairy counter and they told me I couldn’t get one of the Bries because _you’d_ special-ordered it?”

Erik blinks and raises an eyebrow. “And?”

There’s a disparaging sound behind him, and Erik finally turns around - to see that he’s talking to the man in the wheelchair. 

This is the second time that Erik is getting to look at him, and now Erik clocks that the man is really actually rather _gorgeous_ : the blue eyes and the dark hair shaded in red and the freckles have something to do with it, true, but he also sits there as if he’s expecting to hold the room in the palm of his hand, and there is such bright confidence in him that Erik is surprised that no one else is looking.

“Share,” the man says. “I’m not going to be here for much longer. A few more weeks, and my sister will be done refurbishing our place. In the meantime, I have to eat, and that includes cheese, specifically Brie.”

Erik laughs despite himself, and shakes his head, and says, “All right, all right, come on,” and he leads the way back to the counters at the back of the store. 

“I’m Charles,” the man in the wheelchair says once they’re in the checkout line.

“I’m Erik,” Erik says. “Enjoy your cheese.”

“I’m sure I will,” Charles says, with an exaggerated wink.

Erik laughs, and waves goodbye, and watches Charles hang a left towards the park, before he heads on home.

*

In the middle of the night Erik wakes up to a very slowed-down version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”: there are so many flourishes added on to the familiar notes that he thinks it might be a different song entirely.

He sends a silent thanks to the unseen piano player, because the music woke him up from bad dreams, and he turns over and goes back to sleep.

 

*

 _Make him play something more classic,_ says Emma’s email the next day. _Think of Chopin, of Liszt. Mozart! Print a score or something and fold it into an airplane and fly it to your pianist’s window._

Erik rolls his eyes even as he types out his answer: _I’d never assume that he was taking requests._

*

When the pianist abruptly falls silent Erik spends several minutes looking at the fence that stands between his house and his neighbor’s, and something that feels very much like worry unfurls in his chest, like a vine putting out thorny tendrils.

There are two things distracting him: the silence from next door, and the fact that he hasn’t seen Moira in a couple of days.

At first he tries to fill the gap with YouTube: he cues up a list of piano concertos, and some of the music is technically brilliant as well as stirring, but he finds himself wondering about his unseen player, so he switches to the Vitamin String Quartet and amuses himself by thinking about how he’d shoot their instruments.

Erik spends a restless night.

In the end he scrapes Moira’s untouched food bowl into the trash. When the sun comes up he makes some sandwiches and a cheese-and-potato omelette for good measure, and goes to knock on his neighbor’s door.

Or he doesn’t. There’s a sign next to the handle that says, in large spidery handwriting, _Please use the intercom._ The arrow points to the blue call box at eye level.

Erik nearly retreats in disgrace - but the worry is still stronger, and he clears his throat and says, “Hello, it’s Erik from next door. I was wondering if you’re okay.”

The voice that responds is surprised - and surprising, because he’s heard it before. “Erik?”

“Charles?” he asks, and he sounds about as kicked in the stomach as the other man.

“One and the same; and I seem to have something that belongs to you. Come on in. There’s a key to the front door in the third pot to your left, near the door.”

Once he’s in Erik cannot help but look around with his mouth hanging a little open, because downstairs is all one single room, dominated by the piano at one end and some kind of huge cast-iron monstrosity of a stove in the back. There is very little furniture, and all the counters and surfaces are at the right height for someone in a wheelchair to use.

“Charles,” he calls, eyes on the two ruts in the carpet before the piano.

From one of the two doors leading off the downstairs area comes the tired reply. “Here, Erik.”

He follows Charles’s voice. The room he discovers is cozy, and the coverlet is crumpled and his cat is sprawled out on the feet of the man in the bed.

“Moira,” Erik says. And, “Charles - are you all right?”

“I’m doing better now, thank you,” Charles says, though there are still weary lines around the smile that he musters up for Erik’s benefit. “Just had a rather nasty bout of the flu. Thankfully it was also a quick one. I’ll be up and about in no time.”

Erik sweeps the used tissues off the bedside table with one hand and puts the food down, and then he snags the only chair he’s seen in the house that isn’t Charles’s and sits in it.

Charles chuckles weakly and reaches for Erik’s hand, and Erik takes it, feeling the calluses on those squared-off fingertips. He runs his own fingers over the elastic bandage bracing Charles’s wrist. “I like the music you play, even though I don’t always recognize it,” he says.

“Most of the time it’s videogame music,” Charles says. “I’m trying to work around to composing something in the vein of Uematsu and the others. My musical heroes, you know.”

“Not the classical ones?”

“I like Chopin of course. But I like the videogame composers more.”

Erik nods. “So you should try to compose something that follows in their footsteps.”

“Yes. Also, I am very grateful to your cat for putting up with me.”

“Moira likes warmth,” Erik says, tugging very gently on her bushy tail. 

“I’m a furnace even when I’m not sick,” Charles confides.

“Hence hanging around with you. Thanks for looking after her.”

“I’ll write something for her, too. ‘A Waltz for a Cat’ or something like that.”

Erik laughs, and eventually gets around to offering the food he’s made, and he stays with Charles.

**Author's Note:**

> In order, the music cited/used as inspiration, all performed on piano:
> 
> Final Fantasy IV - Prelude - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqwxir6zEdI [composed by Uematsu Nobuo]  
> Amelie - La Valse d'Amelie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO209GwYCr8 [composed by Yann Tiersen; performed by Mike Lew]  
> Mimi wo sumaseba [Whisper of the Heart] - Country Road - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFm6kGT0yFE [composed by John Denver, Bill Danoff, and Taffy Nivert; performed by grooploop]  
> Doctor Who - I am the Doctor - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKrt5IVXQ7k [composed by Murray Gold]


End file.
